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The third annual HIT100 list, ostensibly listing the 100 most influential Twitter accounts in health IT, has been published at Healthcare IT News, and I’m more surprised than flattered to be at No. 44, named 14 times by tweets carrying the #HIT100 hashtag. More accurately, I am in a five-way tie for No. 41, with the likes of: “social venture entrepreneur” Sherry Reynolds (9,000 Twitter followers); Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CIO and health IT rock star Dr. John Halamka (10,600 followers); health IT product strategist Lisa Crymes (2,200 followers); and pre-eminent health IT social media researcher Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet & American Life Project (13,800 followers).

It’s nice to be mentioned among and even above some of those names, and I thank those who voted for me. I also thank the more than 3,600 people who follow me on Twitter. But am I really more influential in health IT than any of the people I mentioned above? I doubt it.

What are your thoughts? Is there a better way of measuring influence than just counting the number of people who tweeted your name with the #HIT100 hashtag?

For the record, topping the list was Dr. Wen Dombrowski, who is about as active as they get when it comes to health IT social media. No arguments here, though I wouldn’t have objected either if Brian Ahier, Regina Holliday, Lionel Reichardt, Gregg Masters, Paul Sonnier (his Digital Health LinkedIn group just passed 19,000 members) or Keith Boone had been No. 1. A case also could be made for John Lynn, founder of the Healthcare Scene network, which hosts this blog.

Leave it to those in the ivory tower of Modern Healthcare to screw up something as simple as an unscientific poll about who should be the next national coordinator for health IT. The poll lists a whopping two dozen names, ranging from the obvious—Dr. John Halamka, Dr. Paul Tang, current deputy national coordinator Dr. Farzad Mostashari—to the dark horse—Dr. Robert Hitchcock of T-System, Paula Gregory of the “Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicince” (sic)—and even a few laughable listings.

For one thing, Dr. David Brailer is on the list. The first national coordinator (2004-06) left Washington because he wanted to be with his family in San Francisco. He’s currently running a $700 million equity investment firm and couldn’t possibly want to get back into the political game, could he? Besides, he’s a Republican. Dr. William Hersh, CMIO of Oregon Health and Science University, would make a good choice, but he’s already said he doesn’t want the job.

Another choice is current CMS Adminstrator Dr. Donald Berwick. Dirty politics is about to force him out, and if that happens, you can bet he won’t want to be within 400 miles of Washington. (Hey, that just happens to be the distance to his home in the Boston area.) I’m really steamed about the Berwick situation, and am preparing a separate post that hopefully will go up tomorrow.

Modern Healthcare also includes Janet Marchibroda, who’s identified as chief healthcare officer of IBM. Sorry, but Marchibroda, former CEO of the eHealth Initiative, left IBM last year. My sources tell me she’s now working at ONC, serving as de facto chief of staff to current coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal. (Blumenthal, as you no doubt know, is leaving in April.)

Missing from the long list of names is Johns Hopkins CIO Stephanie Reel, who won in a landslide the equally informal, unscientific poll that HIStalk ran a couple weeks ago. HIStalk did report, though, that Allscripts effectively stuffed the ballot box. Also not included is Blumenthal’s predecessor, Dr. Robert Kolodner, but he doesn’t want to go back, either.

I’m not going to run another survey here (hey, I doubt I have the readership to make it worthwhile anyway), but I’m curious if people think a non-physician could or should be national coordinator.

Dr. John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School, has officially given up on the idea that people will want to carry their medical records on implanted RFID chips, Michael Millenson reports on The Health Care Blog. Halamka had a chip implanted in 2004, but doesn’t think the public will ever widely accept the technology.

So far, no PHR technology has been widely accepted, but that’s another story.

I’m sure this won’t stop Halamka from experimenting with technologies. He was just the second person to have his genome sequenced and published on the Internet.

Interestingly, the news comes one day after the ECRI Institute included RFID on its list of 10 technologies for hospital executives to watch this year. Of course, there is a difference between tagging assets or employee badges and surgically implanting chips in people’s arms.

A couple of months ago, I posted, “A modest proposal,” my observations about a session on clinical decision support from the American Medical Informatics Association annual meeting. In it, I argued that medical informatics needed a rock star of sorts to help humanize the issue of clinical decision support and communicate the benefits of such technology to the general public.

I got three comments on that post—actually pretty high for this blog—as well as several e-mails. One correspondent said we need more than a rock star, we need the whole band. I passed that comment on to Dr. Bill Bria, CMIO of Shriners Hospitals for Children, who was part of the panel at the AMIA meeting, who told me that he once led an all-physician rock band called the Straight Caths. It still may take the Rolling Stones or perhaps an entire Woodstock to make some of the changes American healthcare needs. Then again, Thursday is Elvis’ birthday.

One non-physician wrote: “That was terrific. Thanks! Except, while I don’t disagree, maybe if they learned to speak English, too, it would help.” Actually, Joan Ash of the Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health and Science University made a similar point in said AMIA session.

CareGroup Healthcare System CIO Dr. John Halamka, himself a rock star in health IT circles for his incredible ability to juggle so many responsibilities (and perhaps for his Johnny Cash wardrobe), pointed me to one of his blog posts about his idea for ASP-style “decision support service providers”

One vendor executive wrote: “Its a shame that these guys seem to believe that CDS just means medication decision support when there are many other steps that use and benefit from DS.” This writer said there should be more of a focus on diagnosis decision support. The e-mail also included a quote from Dr. Donald Berwick: “Genius diagnosticians make great stories, but they don’t make great health care. The idea is to make accuracy reliable, not heroic”

Just think, a well-implemented clinical decision support system could finally give Cuddy a reason to fire House. I think about that every time I watch that show. It’s sad that trial and error can produce such great television.

Free Healthcare IT Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use,
ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Get all the latest Health IT updates from Neil Versel for FREE!

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